


Tales from the Dark Star Lounge

by tersa (alix)



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 - Fandom
Genre: Developing Relationship, Drabble Collection, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Gen Fic, Humor, M/M, Other, Past Relationship(s), Rivalry, Romance, Spoilers, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:53:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 35
Words: 9,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alix/pseuds/tersa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A post to collect short fics written for me_challenge@LJ's 'Insanity Round' fills and my 2011 Ficmas fills.</p><p>Each 'chapter' is a separate fic, and they range the gamut of characters and pairings.</p><p>(Last updated: 31-May, Chapter 33-35, all ME3-era--Schmoopy FemShep/Kaidan, FemShep/Garrus, and angsty BroShep-Garrus friendship fic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "You want me tell you that I've always loved you... but I don't. I really, really don't."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> m!Shepard, Liara T'Soni

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Written with the idea of a John Shepard who had an antagonistic, Renegade relationship with Liara during ME1 seeing her for the first time on Ilium during ME2. Because I don't like the game's assumptions. :P)

“Shepard”, Liara sighed with a smile, stepping around her desk to approach him. Her arms started to come up, and so did his—one, at least, straight and palm out—so that she ran into it, effectively stopped. Confusion came into her expression, looking at him with the beginnings of hurt. “What--?”

“That’s far enough,” he said.

She protested. “But—”

“Personal space. You always had a problem with that concept.” He let his arm drop and looked at her through narrowed eyes, daring her to test him. His hand tightened on the butt of his pistol. “Now, tell me what I need to know.”


	2. Warpaint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> f!Shepard, Ashley Williams / Gen

She looked in the mirror and applied the last touches to her preparation. Red across her cheeks. Blue across her lids. Black around her eyes. White across her forehead and chin. Rose across her lips.

A knock sounded at her door. "Captain Anderson asked me to see if you're ready to disembark, Commander," Chief Williams's voice intruded.

Jane's lipsticked mouth twitched in reaction, studying the make-up mask she'd applied before sighing loudly. "Yes. Let's go face the Council."


	3. My body is ready

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> m!Shepard/Miranda Lawson / UST, Developing Relationship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (In case it's not clear: based on a Renegade Shepard.)

“Shepard, wake up.”

It was a woman’s voice, a familiar woman’s voice, and John struggled to comply. Bright lights beat down on his retinas through cracked eyelids, and he squinted until a shadow interposed itself, bringing the light down to a bearable level. A woman came into focus, blue-eyed, dark hair hanging loose to frame her ivory face.

Memory flashed to the fore. He’d done this before, surfaced from unconsciousness to her looking down at him, to her voice telling him to wake up. “Miranda.” This time, there was warmth to the voice, a softness to the expression, and a corner of his mouth went up reflexively to smile back at her, only to encounter an alien stiffness along the muscles of his cheek and jaw that reminded him of more recent events. He struggled to lever himself up from the med bay table, groaning as his newly patched body protested the effort. Her hands went to his arm and shoulder to assist him, but lingered, he noticed, past necessity. Once up into a seat, he paused to acclimate to the new feel of his mended self. He asked with curiosity, “Where’s Dr. Chakwas?”

“Commander Shepard,” Miranda said with a hint of her old tartness, “I have more experience than anyone on this ship with your cybernetic implants and putting you back together again. When I found out you intended to fix all the lingering damage and hadn’t informed me, well, how do you think I took that?”

“Terribly, I’m sure, Miss Lawson” he said in an insouciant tone, his grin widening to stretch newly healed skin even further. The prickly pride she took in her work, he well knew and understood, but he couldn't let a chance pass to needle her.

He didn’t miss the mark. Her scowl furrowed her forehead and thinned her lips, before they flashed up into a smirk. “You ass,” she said, and there was affection in the tone. A finger lifted to smooth over his brow where the worst scarring had been, the intimacy more than the contact itself stirring a reaction from him, one that was intensified when the touch dropped to his jawline, fingernail dragging along the skin into the stubble at his chin. “Why now? After all this time?”

The truth was on the tip of his tongue, loosened by the heat crackling between them, but he managed to bite it back for the safer ground of sarcasm. “I wanted to look beautiful,” he started to say, pausing for effect and seeing the desired leap of hope answering in her expression, before adding, “For the Collectors.”

The sniff she gave along with her smile was the closest thing to a laugh he’d ever gotten out of her. Disappointment filled him when her hand fell away and she took a step back. “I’m sure they’ll be stunned by the lack of scars,” she said drily. Then his mood swooped back up into exhilaration when she added, “I’ll stop by tonight?” before backing out of the door.

He took his time before leaving the bed, not only because he needed a few more minutes to recover from the procedure, but also the response to her words. Oh, yes. He was ready now for what was to come.


	4. I regret nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> m!Shepard/Ashley, Joker, spoilers from the ME3 trailers and teasers / Past relationship, angst(?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the same Renegade Shepard from Chapter 3, both that prompt and the one for this fic came from the same set and generated these two fics almost as a pair.

John knew he was in trouble the minute Ashley opened her mouth.

“Hello, skipper.”

Her tone was cautious but hopeful, a woman who found it easier to speak through poetry than her own words, and these were her own words, two ordinary words freighted with so much meaning and history between them. That, and the way she looked—her dark hair down, framing her face, as opposed to the usual neat bun she kept it in—took him back to the last, the _only_ time he’d seen her like that.

As incongruous as the timing was, his body remembered.

The cargo bay door of the Normandy clicked shut and he felt the familiar sensation of acceleration as the engines spooled up to escape atmo, jarring him back to a present that had Joker’s voice coming over the comm, “Everyone may want to hang on, the ride out might get a little bumpy,” just as a muffled boom sounded somewhere nearby and the ship lurched to one side, throwing people to the floor and leaving John and Ashley holding on to one another reflexively for balance.

When the shudders subsided, he let go.

“Take care of the Admiral,” he said without thinking and left her there to sprint up to the cockpit.

#####

He sat slumped in a chair behind Joker, looking out on a vista of stars in strange configurations. It had been a harrowing few hours dodging Reapers and only now, after five jumps without a tail, was he beginning to think they’d lost them.

“You should go take a shower, Commander,” Joker said without turning away from his panel, fingers arched over buttons, but he did spare a quick sidelong glance away from the displays. “You look like ass.”

“Thanks, Joker,” John shot back with exaggerated sarcasm. “You try a vacation at Club Leavenworth and see how you look.”

“I’ve heard they have great spa packages.”

His response was a snort, but then he said, “EDI, there a bunk available for me somewhere?”

“Yes, Shepard. Your old quarters have been prepared for you.”

John blinked with surprise. “No one’s claimed them?”

“No, Shepard.”

“No one’s felt right claiming them,” Joker elaborated. “Not after what you did. You’re still the captain.”

A frown creased his forehead. “Who’s been in command, then? Who ordered the pick-up?”

“Who do you think?”

####

He’d just gotten out of the shower, his first _real_ shower in months where the only spying he had to worry about was EDI, and he’d already had that particular discussion with her months ago, when his door chimed. The only thing saving him from a complete lack of decorum was a towel knotted around his waist, but if someone wanted to see him, they’d just have to cope with it. “Enter.”

Of course it was her, dressed in a black t-shirt and fatigue pants bloused over combat boots. Her hair was still down, though, and he suddenly wished he was wearing more than a towel. “Skipper.” A glance down, and she smirked. “Happy to see me?”

“Of course I am,” he replied, but when she made to walk towards him, he moved on a tangent, scooping up a shirt to pull on. “Just surprised, is all.”

She stopped in her tracks at his sidestep, poised midway into the room. “Why?”

 _You weren’t who I expected to come save me,_ flashed through his thoughts, and not for the first time today did he wonder as to why _she_ was here on the Normandy and Miranda wasn’t. He dug a pair of briefs out of a drawer and out loud said, “We didn’t exactly part on the best of circumstances last time.”

Catching the hint from the article of clothing, Ashley turned on her heel to put her back to him before she responded. “Then we didn’t have Reapers crawling up our asses. The galaxy needs saved again, and seems to me you’re the best asset we have to fight them with.”

“’You’?” he echoed her intent in probing fashion after he’d pulled on the underwear, reaching for pants similar in style to her own.

“You didn’t hear? The Council decided it’d be a good PR move to name another human Spectre. I guess with you persona non grata that left me as Option B. Or maybe more like Z.”

He heard the wry self-deprecation in her tone, but this time, two years and a new lifetime later, he felt no need to address it. The bed squeaked when he sat on the edge to pull socks on against the chilly air—he’d forgotten how cold it got in space. “I guess I should’ve guessed that. Congrats.”

She risked a glance over her shoulder and, finding him clothed, turned around to face him once more. “Thanks,” she said, but confusion crept into her expression. “Skipper, about Horizon—”

“Save it,” he cut her off, both verbally and with an outturned hand. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“It does to me,” she replied hotly. “If you don’t want to talk about it, will you at least listen?”

“Fine. What is it?”

“I just wanted to apologize. Again,” she added, but his curtness had taken her aback, he could tell. “I realized afterwards I let my mouth shoot off without thinking like I usually do, and I tried to put it all in the letter, but I don’t know if I did a very good job. Now that you’re here, I was hoping we could maybe talk some more, and—”

“Before you continue,” he interrupted again, a heel tucked up under his thigh as he tied up his boots, “there’s been someone else.”

She literally took a step back from him at that one. “What?” she asked, looking completely flummoxed.

He put his foot down and stood up, considering closing the gap to her but deciding to stay where he was, leaving her space. “On my last mission, working with Cerberus. There was a woman with them. We got to be close.” Echoes of their time together pulsed against his skin, remembrances reverberating around this room they at times shared. Ashley’s presence in it was like an out of tune note.

“’Close’,” she repeated in a flat voice. “How clo—you know what?” She shook her head. “Nevermind, I don’t want to know.” She swiveled on her heel and started toward the door. “I’ll talk to you later, Commander.”

'Commander', not 'skipper'. “Ashley, wait,” he called out, going towards her now to put a hand on her shoulder. “I just wanted to be—”

He never got to finish his sentence, because as his hand made contact, she spun around and punched him. Pain exploded across his cheek and jaw, flesh tore, and blood flooded across his tongue. He had to stifle the immediate, ingrained impulse to hit her back, remembering himself and his place in time. Instead he brushed a knuckle across a bruised corner of his mouth, wiping off a trickle of blood and studying it as he restrained the battle fury raging within him urging him to lash out.

While he struggled for control, she interjected in the silence, repeating with emphasis, “We’ll talk later, Commander.”

The door hissed closed behind her, and he went into the head to examine the damage she wrought in the polished metal mirror. Nothing a little medi-gel and Dr. Chakwas couldn’t mend.

He regretted nothing: not his work with Cerberus, not the destruction of the Alpha Relay, his night spent with Ashley nor his time with Miranda.

But he might, just maybe, regret having lost his chance with her.

She had a damn fine right hook.


	5. Prior engagement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> f!Shepard, Joker / Gen/Humor (Posted: 19-Oct-2011)

Shepard was headed to the airlock with Garrus and Tali when Joker’s voice came over the comm, “Change in plans, Commander. The Illusive Man wants to see you in the comm room.”

She knew what that meant already in her brief ‘alliance’ with Cerberus. Stopping in her tracks, she stared at the speaker incredulously. “I’m _right here_. All I need to do is go find this assassin in the Dantius Towers, and then I can g—“

“Sorry, Commander, he marked it as urgent. Can’t wait.”

Swearing sulfurously, Shepard stomped back to the comm room, punching the button to open the door muttering, “Samara’s a big girl, she could’ve made it back to the ship without me…”


	6. Don't hold your breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> m!Shepard / Gen (Posted: 19-Oct-2011)

It’s one of those things you always know, in the back of your head, _could_ happen, but not something you ever want to think about. Because if it happens, you’re fucked anyway, and if you think too much about it, it will eat you alive and keep you from doing the job. And you need to do the damn job without distraction.

So floating there amidst the wreckage of his ship over the planet of Alchera was the first time John had thought, _really_ thought about the possibility of being spaced and having the air lines on his suit cut and leaking oxygen.

Do you hold your breath? Do you keep breathing as normally as you can so you can hold it in that last moment before the air crossed the threshold from ‘thin’ to ‘too thin’ to breathe, eking out a last few precious moments?

As his vision began to blacken, anoxia to set in, and he felt the beginning of heat burning through his suit, he realized it didn’t really matter and exhaled.


	7. What if we're never here again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> f!Shepard, Miranda / Gen/Humor (Posted: 19-Oct-2011)

“Shepard, what are you doing?” Miranda asked.

Jane ignored her, bringing her omni-tool up to bypass the security on the door. “Who’s leading this squad, you or me?”

“You are,” Miranda replied, her impatience poorly veiled at this point. “The environmental controls are that way, though” she noted, pointing the direction opposite the locked door—and coincidentally at the big leaf emblem with ‘ENVIRONMENT’ glowing gently under it.

The lock blooped gently, and the doors hissed as they opened, revealing what looked to be some sort of workshop area. “I know that,” Jane said, reining in her temper and trying to embrace calm. “You never know what we’re going to need on this mission, though, and we might not come here again. Oh, look!” she exclaimed, bringing up a schematic that from her trained eye looked like schematics for assault rifle improvements. “We can use this!”


	8. Martini

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> m!Shepard, Garrus, Dr. Chakwas / Gen/Humor (Posted: 19-Oct-2011)

John sidled up to bar and slapped his credit chit on the polished surface. “Get me a martini. Stirred, not shaken.”

“Shepard,” Garrus drawled, his tone verging on warning, “I should war—“

“Can it, Garrus. I’ve been shot at, electrocuted, flambéed, zotted, squashed, and blown up today,” he said, watching as the turian bartender mixed several liquids together from unfamiliar bottles, stirring it as he presented it before John on a dainty paper napkin with ‘Afterlife’ emblazoned on the edge. “I want a drink. I _deserve_ a drink.”

“But—“

John ignored him and downed it, wondering, briefly, at the strange, bitter flavor.

Five hours later, John woke up in the Normandy infirmary feeling like he’d been eaten by a thresher maw then run over by a MAKO. Dr. Chakwas clucked her tongue in disapproval. “Mr. Vakarian said he did try to warn you that ‘martini’ is a phonetic duplicate to the name of a turian dextro-protein shake.”


	9. First date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan/f!Shepard / Romance, Established Relationship, set during time of ME3 although no spoilers

He couldn’t use real candles because of the firehazard, so Kaidan had rigged up some lights that ran off of power cells that kinda _looked_ like them if you squinted (he’d even whipped up a program that would cause the light to flicker like a flame. He was pretty sure such a program existed somewhere, but it was good to prove he could still do it when it came to it). Roping Gardner into it hadn’t been too difficult—getting the supplies for him had been, especially given the state of the galaxy.

To have Shepard stomp into the Loft and stop dead in her tracks in the small office area, the look of shocked confusion on her face, made everything worth it.

At least until she opened her mouth.

“What is this?” she asked dumbly, eyes traveling over everything he’d prepared: the table set with recyclable plastic plates and utensils rather than mess trays, the covered containers of food, a _tablecloth_ (which was just one of the sheets from Dr. Chakwas’s infirmary, folded in half), the faux candlelights, and Kaidan wearing the nicest set of slacks and shirt he owned that didn’t have Alliance stamped all over it.

“We’ve never officially been out on a date,” he said, trying to control the sudden attack of nerves. He felt sweat popping out in unsexy places despite the coolness of the recycled air. “I was hoping to rectify that.”

He wasn’t quite sure how to take her sudden smile, because there was as much narrowed eyes about it as amusement. “We’re in the middle of one of the biggest wars in recent memory, maybe even bigger than the Rachni War, with the fate of every sentient organic race on the line…and you made _dinner_?”

“Well, technically Gardner made dinner,” Kaidan explained, feeling his cheeks get warmer and warmer with embarrassment, and fumbled to salvage the situation. “And we have to eat, right?”

“Yes, I guess we do.” With a pause, she put the datapad in her hand on the edge of the desk and pressed the rest of the way into the room. “I…can’t believe you did this,” she said in wonder, sounding as awkward as he’d felt.

Only then did Kaidan let out his breath and smiled with relief. “Why not? It’s what we’re fighting for, right? Life?”


	10. Windy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> f!Shepard, Ashley, Kaidan, implied developing f!Shepard/Kaidan / Gen

The air was alive.

There was no other way to explain it. It whipped across her skin and tore at her hair, swirling in fits and starts, tugging the strands away from her scalp and whipping the ends against her face. With a scowl, Jane wrapped an arm around her head, pulling everything back to try to get it under control, but errant locks slipped free and began their irregular, _annoying_ pattering against her eyes.

“Dammit, how do planetborn people _deal_ with this?” she snarled in frustration vaguely in Ashley’s direction.

An amused noise, half sniff, half snicker, came from her. “Why do you think I wear my hair like this, Commander? Not much wind to speak of on the ships and stations, but down here? You have to be practical. Long hair gets in the way.”

Jane growled. “You’ll need to show me what to do when we get back.”

There was _definitely_ laughter in Ashley’s “Aye-aye, Commander.”

Later, her hair pulled back into a simple but efficient knot she _thought_ she could duplicate herself, she passed Alenko’s station and got a disappointed, “Did you change your hair, Commander?”

She couldn’t win for losing.


	11. Happily ever after

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> m!Shepard, Admiral Hackett / Gen

Guys like him didn’t get fairy tale endings.

Oh, he knew what fairy tales were. The sisters at St. Jerome’s used to read them to the wards, every child crowded knee to knee fanning out from her feet to hear about Cinderella and Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and Prince Charming. Out on the street, though, he learned there were no fairy godmothers, birds would not swoop out of the sky to pluck out the eyes of the wicked, no convenient ovens to fall into or propitious cliffs to fall off of. It was just life, sometimes you won, sometimes it was shitty, and if you were lucky, the good times outweighed the bad.

He’d defeated Saren. He took down the collectors. Even got the girl, who was nothing close to a princess. And now this.

“You’ll need to report back to Earth to answer for this,” Admiral Hackett said.

“Are you kidding me? I just bought us some more time to prepare for the Reapers. The Council and the Alliance should be _thanking_ me.”

“Soon, Commander,” Hackett said with a hard look before exiting the infirmary.

Yeah. Fuck happily ever after.


	12. Infection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> f!Shepard, Tali, implied Tali/Kal / Fluff

Shepard watched Tali walk down airlock from the Neema and frowned slightly. It was impossible to actually see Tali’s face through the smoky face shield of her environmental suit, but Jane was sure if she could, Tali’s skin would have been either chalk pale or slightly green, given the tone of her voice when she said, “It’s good to see you again, Shepard. I should go see Dr. Chakwas.”

Thumping on the closed airlock door, Jane said, “Joker, get us out of here,” and ignored his “Aye-aye, Commander,” to turn back to Tali. “What happened? Was there some sort of accident in the Fleet?”

“No, no accident,” Tali said in a weak rush. “I just, uh, saw Kal’Rheegar.”

Jane should have offered a shoulder for Tali to lean on, watching her labor towards the elevator, but she was too momentarily stunned to follow after. Then she smiled wryly, and hurried to catch up.


	13. Magic tricks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan Alenko, OCs / Gen

He was a magician.

It was magnificent.

“Watch,” Kaidan said to the other boy, wanting desperately to impress him enough to become his friend. He stretched out his hand and curled his fingers—just so—and the stylus wobbled up off the table and glided towards them.

“Mr. Alenko,” a woman’s stern voice interrupted his concentration, sending the stylus bouncing down onto the table top then off it to the floor. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he answered quickly and automatically, feeling shame burn in his cheeks.

A week later, two men in black suits knocked on the door of his house.


	14. Once upon a time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a Mass Effect backstory

…there lived a most potent sorcerer, but he wasn’t happy. He lived alone in his black tower, ruling his kingdom with ruthless acumen.

But he was lonely.

And so he researched, for weeks and months and years, the powers with which to create life. Eye of newt and scale of fish, skin of frog and hair of unicorn, all went into his cauldron until the night of the full moon on All Hallow’s Eve, he added the final ingredient, rarer than rare, one solitary tear falling from his cheek, and with a *poof*, fire roared upwards, burning itself out until all that was left was a small, dark-haired girl child. Not a boy, who would one day grow up and leave him for a wife or kingdom of his own, but a girl who would be quite literally the apple of his eye, who he could dote on and teach and would take care of him when he grew old.

Except the sorcerer, in his eagerness to hone the perfection of his creation, teaching her everything he knew, brought foreign concepts into his sanctum—‘mother’ as well as father, community, a larger world whose boundaries were not proscribed by stone walls and lines on a map.

One day, the girl made tea for the sorcerer, as she always did, but into it she slipped a draught of sleep that the sorcerer, complacent in his work, did not suspect. He felt into a deep slumber and when he awoke, his daughter was gone.

Oh, did he rage. The tower walls shook with his anger. He spoke dire threats and muttered imprecations, until his ire was spent and cold logic returned.

She was flawed in her upbringing. He could analyze his mistakes.

And he could begin anew.


	15. It's a trap!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> m!Shepard, Kaidan, Liara, Tali / Gen/Attempted humor :)

John didn’t like this place. The unfamiliar foliage made the light strange, playing tricks on his eyes. Insects buzzed, occluding his hearing.

In the clearing in front of him sat a box on a concrete slab, as if awaiting pick-up. Tents pitched around it in a semi-circle seemed deserted, but he couldn’t be sure of that.

“This feels like a trap,” Kaidan’s voice came on over the comm system into the headphones.

Giving a mirthless snort, John muttered, “Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Alenko.”

“What?”

Louder, John replied, “Never mind.”

“Do we go in, Shepard?” Liara asked.

They needed that box. Flickering his gaze side-to-side, John nodded, then realizing his companions wouldn’t see it, said into the microphone, “Fan out, and be careful.”

They’d gotten halfway to the box when the drones burst out from every tent flap, red beams shooting in his direction and splashing against the screen before it went black, accompanied by Tali’s “Got you, Shepard!”

Tearing off his headphones in disgust to throw them on the table, John called out, “Tali! What did I tell you about re-programming the game? That’s _cheating_!”


	16. Out of Uniform / AWOL / Fraternization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> f!Shepard/Kaidan / NSFW'ish

“What do you think you’re doing, Lieutenant?”

Kaidan froze at the imperative tone in Jane’s voice, then cursed himself for the ingrained reaction to respond like that, even if normally it was expected. “Going back to my quarters. It’s late,” he said.

The sound of her movement brought his head around in time to catch her settling back on her elbows, the sheet draped across her chest but failing to cover the curve of a breast as it swelled up from her body, causing an answering swell from his own. But she was saying something, “…out of uniform, and going AWOL.” The edge of the bedclothes twitched aside, revealing a longer expanse of bare skin down to her hip. “From my bed.”

A smile tugged at the corner’s of his mouth. “What’s the punishment for that? Ma’am,” he added in deliberate afterthought.

“I’m sure it’s not in the regs,” she replied drily, watching him as he walked back to her bunk. “I’ll have to think of something…creative.”


	17. That’s Just Not Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joker, f!Shepard, suggestions there may be Jokermance later / G / Gen/Humor
> 
> Written for a friend of mine for Ficmas 2011, with the prompt: " _something, anything, with the following elements - Kaidan, that awesome pink armor I made you dress him in, show tunes and abuse of hair care products_ "

**  
_Midway through Mass Effect 1..._   
**

Joker was all too aware of Shepard’s presence when she came up on the bridge. Not that she said anything or wore different boots than the rest of the crew or anything, just—a different way of walking. Could walking with authority be sexy? Because there was something sexy about the way her footsteps hit the flooring, the Doppler until they stopped just behind his left shoulder the same precise distance every time.

She was silent. He was silent.

Until he couldn’t stand it anymore. “Pink armor, Commander? Really?”

He liked her chuckle, low pitched, coming from somewhere deep in her chest and bubbling up all smoky-like. “Beggar’s can’t be choosers, Lieutenant. Feros isn’t the Citadel and it was the only thing that salarian merchant had in Alenko’s size. And it was better than what we had. He'll cope.”

“Yeah, but that rose-scented pomeade…”

He heard her shrug, her uniform whispering against her skin as it re-settled, and squashed imagining in fine detail how it had probably _looked_. “Feros. Scarcity. He said he needed some, and Williams thought he might _die_ without it.”

There was amusement in her tone now, and it was Joker’s turn to grin. “He might not admit it, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

Silence passed for a few seconds, broken by her dry voice, “But what was with those _show tunes_ I heard him humming at his station—“

He cut her off quickly, unable to suppress his smirk. “Better not to ask.”


	18. ...and never stops at all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (FemShep/Kaidan, G, AU ME3 endgame spoilers)
> 
> The technical 'prompt' that instigated this was a series of prompts all from the same Dickinson poem:
> 
> "Hope is the thing with feathers  
> That perches in the soul  
> and Sings the tune without the words  
> and never stops at all"

Each second of the clock ticking past tightened the bands squeezing Kaidan's chest. The Normandy's systems still reported biometric readings from Shepard's suit, but they painted an alarming picture. If they couldn't track down her GPS signal soon, they were going to lose her, but navigating the debris field of the destroyed Citadel was a tricky business even in the Kodiak and Cortez's skillful piloting.

"We'll find her, Major," Cortez said in response to Kaidan's hovering behind his seat, trying to re-assure him, but Kaidan heard the tension underlying the words.

"Keep looking." Kaidan's voice was rusty, hoarse from shouting during the battle on earth, choked on the fear clawing at his throat. _I can't lose you again_ hammered inside his mind in time with his pulse, the beat of the migraine pounding at his skull. He fought the urge to throw up. He couldn't leave the read outs.

"Vital signs are fading," Dr. Chakwas's voice came on the comms. "We need to get to her now."

Cortez said through gritted teeth, "I'm trying, doctor--there!" A large piece of the structure loomed ahead of them, large enough that some of the life support systems might still be intact.

Kaidan slammed his helmet on, ignoring the pain lancing between his eyes from the motion, and barked to Vega and Garrus, "Move out. Let's find her."


	19. I'm coming back for you, I promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (FemShep, based on FemShep/Kaidan Alenko, PG)
> 
> Spoilers for the ME3 endgame

Pain wracked Shepard’s body, physical pain like she’d only felt once before: that one time in orbit around Alchera when she’d, oh, died. Whatever had happened after she’d been hit by that beam from Harbinger had ripped half her armor off and not cleanly, either. Her skin crackled on her cheek from a rivulet of oozing blood drying along the edges, and she had trouble catching her breath, a sign that she’d probably punctured a lung along with breaking one to twelve ribs.

“You must choose.”

Pain clawed at Shepard’s chest like she’d only felt once before: that first time on Horizon, when Kaidan had walked away from her. But what caused her heart to contract and hurt was more recent, the raw emotion of his broken, “ _I can’t lose you again_.”

“You must choose.”

Pain hammered at Shepard’s mind, the pounding of a headache mingling with Ashley’s voice, swimming up from memory, only half remembered (and was it really her voice? Shepard no longer knew), another place, another choice. Who lives? Who dies? Why was it she always had to make these decisions? It hurt to think.

“You must choose,” the ethereal projection demanded with child-like implacability.

“ _When this is over? I’m going to be waiting for you. You better show up._ ”

She was tired. Worn out. She looked with exhaustion at the three options before her and one last time let her heart guide her path. With limping slowness, she approached the red-limned structure, but surging hope straightened her spine as she began to fire the last shots of the Reaper War.


	20. The memorial wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (FemShep, Garrus, friendship, implied FemShep/Kaidan / G  
> Set late ME3

She stops there some time after every mission: the shape of her failure writ in white on black, like stars in space. She notices that no matter how the order changes, the shapes look like two letter Bs side by side, and wonders if there is meaning to be taken from it. She notices the names—Ashley. Pressly. Mordin. Thane.—the others that she knew in passing from her time on the SR-1, but not well, not like those four.

Garrus slides the newest plaque—LEGION—in with a click, then steps back to stand beside her as she looks on dry-eyed but with a tightness in her throat she never expected to feel over the death of a geth platform.

“It’s only going to get worse,” Garrus observes, a weariness in his voice that makes him sound old; old and worn out and _tired_ , down to his bones.

She knows, because that’s how she feels.

“Yes,” is all she can get out, a rusty sound torn from her lips.

His voice goes quiet, nearly inaudible over the murmur of the off-duty crew filling the floor. “Are you okay?”

Because it’s _Garrus_ , she’s honest. “No.”

They were silent, the two of them, looking at the wall, not speaking because they were long past needing to. Whole conversations were held in the silence, simply being together.

Without a word or gesture, she turned and headed for Starboard Observation, looking for Kaidan.


	21. Salvation from the devil himself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Miranda/m!Shepard, The Illusive Man / PG)  
> set post-ME2

Off to the side, Miranda watched as Shepard contacted the Illusive Man via the quantum entanglement comm. system and delivered his ultimatum. He’d done everything the Illusive Man had asked for and then some—salvaged countless projects gone wrong, numerous resources, gotten in and out of the Cerberus operation on the derelict Reaper vessel, captured the Collector Base for future study—and now the Illusive Man was _threatening_ Shepard for wanting to continue to take the attack to the Reapers? Hadn’t that been the point of this, to save the human colonists and stop the Collectors from furthering the Reapers advance?

“Is Miranda with you?” the Illusive Man’s voice asked coolly through the speakers.

From within the gridmarks of light painting his body, Shepard turned to look at her. His expression was implacable, but she saw amusement in his eyes, shading the QEC wouldn't transmit, and gave him a small smile in return when he answered, “She’s here.”

Knowing what was expected of her, she stepped forward to join Shepard in the QEC field, the view of the Illusive Man’s office springing up in projection before her eyes. He was seated in his chair, leg crossed casually on his knee, the glowing tip of his cigarette stark contrast to the dark background of the room.

“The Lazarus Project is complete. It’s time to shut it down and return for your new assignment. Don’t look at him,” he ordered harshly when Miranda glanced up at Shepard standing next to her.

Even without that look, she was all too aware of the warmth of his body where it nearly touched her from shoulder to knee, drawing out memories of the night before and…feelings she never expected to have for anyone, much less him. But even if she hadn’t, he’d still shown her things, different ways of thinking, exposed the rotten underbelly of Cerberus to her that this man, this Illusive Man, had hidden from her all these years.

Her father supported Cerberus.

Her father supported this man.

“You’re right, the Lazarus Project is complete. My job is done. I can resign with nothing left undone. You’ll have my final report before the day is out.”

“Don’t you turn your back on me,” the Illusive Man said, not so uncouth as to snarl, but the threat was clear in his tone. “I gave you everything you needed to get to where you are today. You owe me.”

“With that logic, I should never have left my father,” Miranda replied acidly. “And never have worked for you in the first place. I’ve realized you’re no better than him. Commander Shepard is right, the real threat is the Reapers. We should be doing everything to stop them, to hell with humanity first.”

“You’ll regret those words,” the Illusive Man said. The last thing she saw was him punching a button on the console before the connection severed, leaving her blinking at the artificial lights of the conference room.

“I’m proud of you, Miranda,” Shepard said, warmth in his voice. “I never expected you to break with him, after all the times you defended him and Cerberus.”

“Well, Commander,” she said with self-deprecating chagrin, “nobody’s perfect.”


	22. Big goddamn heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (FemShep, Kaidan, Garrus, Tali, implied pairings, vague end of ME3 spoilers, PG for language)

The sun was hot as it beat down on Shepard, causing sweat to collect on the plastic webbing supporting her back and thighs. Dark tinted glass protected her eyes from the worst of the radiation, but only one thing could address the dehydration she felt.

She pushed a button on her omni-tool.

Sand crunched under sandaled feet as a young man came out with a tray laden with chilled drinks in impossibly designed glasses, two with red umbrellas, two with blue, and delivered them to Kaidan, Garrus, Tali, and herself before withdrawing just as discreetly away.

“This was a good idea, Garrus,” Kaidan said from his reclined position on Shepard’s other side, wearing only a pair of board shorts and a liberal layer of tanning oil.

“And what was the occasion?” Tali asked, a playful tone to the rhetorical question.

“Big goddamn heroes,” Garrus replied with lazy smugness, sounding utterly content to be basking in the hot tropical sun.

Shepard grinned with contentment. “Damn straight.”


	23. How much coffee have you had?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (FemShep, Vega, Kaidan, late game ME3 spoilers, PG for language)

Shepard didn’t like it. Not one bit. That it was an ardat-yakshi monastary was bad enough—she had first hand experience with one and remembered how powerful Morinth’s allure was, even forewarned,how difficult it had been to resist the primal attraction. To be walking around a place dedicated to housing scores of them made her jumpy, but having the lights be out on top of that made her skin crawl. It reminded her of the horror films she used to watch in high school, giggling with her girlfriends during sleepovers, except this one was _real_.

From far away there was a high-pitched grating scream, a sound that made her hair try to stand on end.

“What the hell was _that_?” Vega said in hoarse sotto voce, nervousness leaking from his tone.

“Be ready,” Shepard said steadily, although she felt as jumpy as James sounded. She heard Kaidan’s gloves creak as he found a tighter grip on his pistol.

They progressed deeper into the darkened room, finding no one but plenty of signs of violence, from knocked over chairs, splashes of blue blood, abandoned padds.

A clatter behind her brought the muzzle of her assault rifle up and a sharp shriek from James accompanied by a burst of gunfire, and a “Jesus Christ!” yell from Kaidan.

“What the hell?” Shepard demanded in a low growl.

“I tripped,” Kaidan explained while glaring at Vega.

“Sorry.”

Shepard snorted and turned forward once more, proceeding with a muttered, “Time to switch to decaf.”


	24. Vega tries to one-up Kaidan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Vega, Kaidan, implied FemShep/Kaidan, vague ME3 spoilers, G'ish)

James started the trend when he set up the equipment in the shuttle bay to turn it into a makeshift gym, but other members of the crew caught on soon enough. There was only so much space on the ship for that sort of thing, and the open hangar made an ideal place for it. When he wasn’t helping (“helping”) Cortez maintain the armory, James was unofficial P.T. instructor and sparring partner.

When Major Kaidan Alenko, Second Human Spectre Ever Thank You Very Much, exited the lift dressed in BDU pants and a t-shirt, James cracked his knuckles in anticipation. He’d been stuck on the ship since the Major had rejoined the _Normandy_ , and it pissed James off. He was good at one thing, one thing only, and it was _not_ sitting on the sidelines cooling his heels.

There seemed only one way to change that.

“Care to dance?”

A slight smile turned up a corner of Alenko’s mouth as his gaze gave James a once over. “I usually make people buy me a drink first.”

“I’ll buy you a drink later, if you want. You might need it.”

An eyebrow went up, the smile no longer making it to Alenko’s eyes. “Is that a threat, Lieutenant?”

“Only if you don’t think you can hold your own,” James said with a wide smile, shaking out his arms to ready himself. Alenko was definitely fit, but James had height, weight, and years of street fighting on his side to Alenko’s relatively recent release from the hospital. James knew he could totally take him.

They squared off, bringing fists up protectively in front of their faces, gazes meeting through the barrier. A feint, James punched—

\--and found himself flying backwards through the air to crash onto the flight deck with a _*WHOOF*_ of air escaping his lungs.

James was still trying to catch his breath and the tattered remains of his pride when footsteps sounded near his ear and Alenko reached down a hand to help him up. “You cheated,” James wheezed, then accepted the hand.

Bluish light coursed down Alenko’s arm before he jerked, bringing James back to his feet with unexpected ease, before it subsided. “You never said biotics weren’t allowed,” Alenko pointed out, releasing his grip. “A soldier is a sum of his parts, not just one aspect.”

“Is that why Lola likes you so much?” James asked, letting some of his peevishness leak out into his tone. “The biotics?”

“Lola?” Alenko asked in confusion, before realization hit and he tried hard to suppress a smirk. “Partially. Also for some other reasons I don’t think are any of your business. Just keep the lesson in mind, Lieutenant.”

James grimaced and rubbed the back of his head, where he felt a knot growing. “Yes, sir.”


	25. Follow the spiders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (femShep, Tali, Garrus / PG)
> 
> Mild ME3 spoilers

Shepard’s skin crawled. Bad enough being in the cave, under the ground, was triggering the feeling of claustrophobia, that the roof would fall and she’d be trapped under tons of rock and earth. To add to it was the darkness, the damp, crawling through rivulets and muck with only the omni-tool, the pilot of the flame thrower, and the glow of reaper tech to guide them by. And then there was the rachni, or whatever the hell they were now that the Reapers got to them, a race so brutally effective at killing that they’d nearly wiped out the sentient races long before the Reapers got here and only defeated because of the krogan. The krogan who were now being annihilated by the new kind, off dying somewhere again as Grunt and his company battled their way in.

“We should be able to follow the power lines in to the central nest,” Garrus pointed out. “As long as we keep encountering the rachni, we know we’re going the right way.”

“Do we have to?”

The plaintive quaver in Tali’s voice brought a nervous chuckle to Shepard’s lips. If the situation made her ready to jump out of her skin, it was oddly reassuring to know someone else was taking it even worse.


	26. cold shower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Kaidan, implied burgeoning Kaidan/femShep / PG-13)
> 
> Circa ME1

Kaidan sighed as the water from the shower sluiced down his skin, the heat warming him and sending clouds of steam into the tiny space. This far out in the Terminus Systems the rationing was brutal, and he enjoyed this small luxury when he could get it.

_Shepard’s smile as they teased him about it, Ashley joking he took longer than some of her sisters had._

Warmth from more than the water crept through him, and he tried banishi—

_Surrounded by the dancers at Chora’s Den, the music pulsing through his ears and into his bones, stirring him on a primal level, and his gaze strayed to her--_

No. She was his commanding officer, for chrissakes, and he was _not_ going to think about her li—

_Turning in the cramped airlock and running into her, neither of them wearing more than the thin fabric underarmor after stripping off the outer stuff, damp with sweat, smelling of musky exertion, her breasts flattening against his ches--_

“Oh, for the love of Pete,” he groaned, and with ill-temper, twisted the temperature control valve down to freezing.


	27. Welcome to the machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Legion, Tali, Shepard / G)
> 
> Circa end of ME2 (Overlord)

“No!” Creator Zorah cried out, as Shepard-Commander jerked back from the console, limbs moving in ways that did not seem to fall within normal operating parameters. Shepard-Commander lurched and staggered in a zig-zag path which did not follow the truism of being the shortest one, out the point of entrance used to access this enclosed space, the aperture dilating closed behind him. The platform the organics referred to as Legion tried to follow but was blocked by this door, Creator Zorah beating on it unproductively.

The collective analyzed this event and consensus was reached that Shepard-Commander had been drawn into the collective formed by this isolated heretic hub. An organic was made part of the collective.

All information was good. This one was stored away into the shared database of all geth knowledge. It might be used some day.


	28. Toy Story / Brave / Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (AU'ish ME3 post-game, femShep/Garrus, Kaidan, implied prior femShep/Kaidan / G / Angst)
> 
> Inspired by all three prompts

“Pew pew pew!” the littlest girl said, and her elder brother clutched his chest, crumpling dramatically into the grass to the girl’s shrieks of laughter. She leapt atop of him, and he oofed as she landed on his chest, unprepared for even her slight weight.

On the porch, the woman chuckled drily, albeit with wistful sadness. How many times had she played that game with her brothers and sister on Mindoir, before the slavers had attacked? How much courage had it taken to overcome her fear from that day, to turn toy guns into real ones and become a marine, an officer, N7, a Spectre?

She was old now. Old and tired, and so allowed to feel a little bit jealous of what Kaidan had, even though she’d made her decision long ago. Garrus reached out and covered her hand, perhaps sensing her thoughts, and she squeezed back. No, she’d made her choice and if there were no little Shepards running around in the yard, she’d had her courtesy nieces, nephews, and great niephews who adored her.

“You okay, Shepard?” Kaidan asked aloud in a voice made rusty by the passage of time, maybe seeing something of it in her expression.

“Fine, Kaidan.”

She died later that night, an old warrior in her bed, knowing at least she’d left the world a better place than it might’ve been without her.


	29. Little bundle of joy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (FemShep, Joker, Gen)
> 
> The prompt (chapter title) was accompanied by a parenthetical: "if one of you turns this into a litter of varren, I will die of pure lol"
> 
> My response: challenge accepted!

“Let me get this straight,” Joker said, swiveling his chair around to scowl up at Shepard. “You went to Tuchanka last year…and befriended a varren.”

“Urz,” Shepard supplied helpfully, before catching sight of Joker’s expression and having the grace to wince with guilt.

“And when you went back to Tuchanka to help Wrex out, you found it.”

“Erm. Yes.”

“And brought it back to the ship.”

“If you’d seen it following me around like a puppy last year, you’d unde—“

“ _My_ ship.”

“Well, technically, Joker, it’s my ship. Or the Alliance’s.”

Joker glared at her. She snapped her mouth shut. “You brought it back to _my_ ship, and…” he trailed off meaningfully.

“It escaped the shuttle bay,” she said, refusing to meet his eyes.

“And…?”

“Got loose in the ducts.”

“Right, and now somewhere in this ship, my _baby_ , there’s a litter of varren pups running around.”

“That is correct, Jeff,” EDI chimed in.

“When we catch them,” Joker muttered, turning back to his console and away from Shepard, “you know where I’m dumping them. Right in the middle of your cabin.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, yeah? Watch me.”


	30. Little Shepards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Kaidan/FemShep, G, teeth-rotting fluff)

“Daddy?”

The forlorn, small child’s voice dragged Kaidan out of unconsciousness to bleary wakefulness, and he turned his head to find Eve standing next to the bed clutching her ragged teddy bear. “What is it, _sayang_?” he asked while passing a hand across sleep-encrusted eyes.

“I had a bad dream.” She sniffled, rubbing the back of her hand across her nose, driving home the image of her vulnerability. “Can I sleep with you and mommy?”

He couldn’t catch the sigh before it escaped him. Three weeks of broken nights had left him short-tempered and possessive of what time he _did_ get to sleep, and he knew he’d get almost none now with Eve in the bed, but he lifted the corner of the blankets and offered a hand out so she could crawl over him to settle between him and Shepard. Shepard, thankfully, continued to sleep, or seemed to, Eve settled down, and Kaidan thought maybe, _maybe_ he might get to drop off, beginning to drift when Andrei, the reason he’d gotten so little sleep recently, began fussing for his nightly feeding.

Eve startled awake and kicked him in the kidney.

Shepard’s voice broke into the darkness, “Remember after the Reapers were gone, you told me the worst had passed and convinced me the rest would be happily ever after?”

He already suspected where her question was leading and sighed again with exasperation. “Yeah.”

She didn’t even stir from her place sprawled face down on the other side of Eve. “Good. Then you can go take care of him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _sayang_ : a Malay word that translates to 'love' (both the noun and verb form); provided by a native Singaporean as a possible term of endearment between a father and his daughter.


	31. penance for your sins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FemShep, just prior to ME3

Alone.

Alone.

Alone.

She thought a lot about Jack.

People moved through the detention center, but she couldn’t interact with them. Look but don’t touch. They lmoved about freely, did their work, while she—what, was a prisoner? A refugee? Asylum? She was something and nothing, a problem that didn’t need fixing.

She’d died, she was no longer technically part of the Alliance. She was a Spectre, she’d been doing her damn job when she’d blown up the relay in the Bahak system to buy the galaxy more time to prepare for the Reapers and not be taken by surprise. Months had passed since then, and she wasn’t seeing any sign in the news they let through from the extranet of preparations happening.

She was being punished for a sin that wasn’t, cooling her heels with only Vega to talk to. When he would talk. He was a remarkably good watchdog, speaking very little, maintaining his distance.

She wondered where Anderson was. Garrus. Tali. Kaidan.

She’d been alone before. After Mindoir. After Akuze. But there was a different kind of alone in this, and she knew how Jack had felt, that one way mirror where you screamed and screamed at the people on the other side, and no one paid attention, just went on with their lives.

They were coming. And everything she’d done was going to be for fucking naught.


	32. Returning to Eden Prime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-game; BroShep, Ashley, previous BroShep/Ashley, contemplating their former relationship

Shepard pressed his arm against the window of the shuttle, leaning in to watch as the patchwork ground below grew larger as they descended. It’d been five years since he’d first stepped foot on the planet, five years that had set him inexorably on the path to confronting the Reapers and saving the galaxy. Absently, he spun the ring on his left finger with the opposing thumb, thinking about everything that had happened since then—Saren, Sovereign, Harbinger, the Catalyst. Surviving. Getting married. Getting on with his life.

“Hey, Skipper.”

He didn’t look away from the view, but he smiled slightly. “Ash.”

She joined him, her presence more felt than seen at his side. “Kinda feels strange coming back again, doesn’t it.”

“Not the first time,” he reminded her.

“I know. But it’s different this time, you know? There’s no one down there trying to kill all the colonists, for one.”

“That _is_ different,” he agreed, smile widening a fraction.

They stood in silence, comfortable, not needing to speak, but then he wanted to. “Do you ever regret what happened? With us?”

“Sometimes,” she replied, only the faintest tinge of wistfulness coloring the matter-of-factness. “I loved you. If shit hadn’t happened, gotten in the way…”

“But they did,” he finished. “So you know, I did love you then. If Alchera hadn’t happened…you’re happy though, right?”

“Yes,” she said, and he heard the softness in her voice.

For a moment, he was jealous, remembering her using that tone speaking to him. But that had been a long time ago. Almost as long ago as the last time they were on Eden Prime. He sighed and brushed it away, straightening up. “Ready to face the hordes, Captain?”

“Right behind you, Admiral.”


	33. Hypocrite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BroShep-Garrus friendshp fic, kinda, a Renegade Shepard hits the nadir of ME3. A re-imagining of in-game events to better fit headcanon on one of my playthroughs.

Shepard had done a lot of things during the course of his career that he was sure other people questioned his ethics over. _Had_ questioned his ethics over. Kaidan had taken him for task for destroying the rachni queen on Noveria. He’d killed the asari researcher on Virmire pretty much in cold blood, after getting what he needed out of her. He’d let the geth take out the Destiny Ascencion in order to save human lives, something the new Council pointedly reminded him of when he went to them for help for Earth against the Reapers. He’d let Morinth kill Samara.

He’d felt guilty for none of it.

But now, now…this was different. Unfamiliar emotions—self-loathing, recrimination—tore away at him, and he tried to drown them, numb them, make himself pass out, forget, just a moment’s respite that’s all he wanted. He crawled through the bars of the Citadel, every single one, he knew all of them well, until he was forced to find the ones he didn’t know, the illegal places tucked into the walls that C-sec either didn’t know or turned a blind eye to, patronized by batarians, by vorcha, given space not because of who he was-- _especially_ not because of who he was—but because even blind drunk he’d managed to send five people to the infirmary by smashing them into a bulkhead with his biotics.

He nursed the liquid the bartender claimed was shard wine and prayed that he’d imbibe enough to pass out like all the vids promised would happen when drinking to excess. It hadn’t happened yet.

He wasn’t surprised when Garrus sat down next to him. ‘Surprise’ would require him feeling something, and he wasn’t sure he’d felt _anything_ else for a while. “Every time I see you, you seem to have a new scar,” Garrus drawled out drily.

The comment caused Shepard to put a hand to his face. Not that he could _feel_ his fingertips touch the cut on his cheek or his swollen nose, but he had fuzzy memories they were there. “Go’way,” he muttered, hunching his shoulders up to his ears as he leaned on the bar and hovered protectively over his glass.

“Can’t do that, Shepard. You have a galaxy to save, remember? It’s time you got back to the Normandy.”

“Fuck the galaxy,” Christian said, carefully enunciating the word.

“Maybe later,” Garrus said with aplomb. A strong, talon-tipped hand wrapped around Shepard’s bicep and hauled, bringing Shepard to his feet, and the hand shifted to encircle Shepard’s waist, half keeping him upright, half propelling Shepard towards the door. “Right now, we need to get back to the _Normandy_.”

“I killed him,” Shepard blurted out outside the doorway, in the cool, dark privacy of a forgotten space between the infrastruture and the rest of the world.

“Wrex? I know. Oh, the official reports are he died as a result of a poker game, but I didn’t believe that and did some checking around. It was in self-defense, Shepard, don’t bla—“

“Not Wrex,” Shepard interrupted forcefully. “Well, him, too. Mordin. I killed Mordin.” He said very carefully, before words spilled out of him, sentences and thoughts becoming fragmented and scattered. “Couldn’t let him cure the genophage. Eve was dead. Didn’t trust Wrex. Had to make the krogan believe they were cured. Wrex found out. Now they’re leaving. All of it, all of it, for fucking _nothing_. I killed him for _nothing_.”

Sometime during the waterfall confession, they’d stopped, Shepard realized, although the walls were still swaying. He wondered if he got sick, if the Keepers would come and clean it up. Then he wondered why they weren’t moving and what Garrus was going to do.

“Damn.”

Softly spoken, one word, but it fell on Shepard like a benediction. Like a knife through puppet strings, he felt the tension snap, and he sagged.

Oblivion never felt so good.


	34. Healing touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Schmoopy FemShep/Kaidan ME3 end game vignette

Shepard was tired. _Tired_. No, not just tired, exhausted. Thoroughly used up. She’d heard terms like ‘worn down to a nub’ and never truly understood what it meant, but if anytime applied, it had to be now. It felt like she’d been running at 110% capacity since leaving Earth, depleting her fuel cells until she was running on dwindling coffee and eezo fumes and not much more. She’d lost weight—it was impossible to keep on between the short supplies and the stress and simply forgetting to eat between constant monitoring of the news or comm vids with the admirals or debriefs wth the crew or dropping planetside. And it felt like forever since she’d seen Kaidan, even though she saw him all the time, in passing, sometimes a quick peck on the cheek as he went out to take care of the assignments the Council had handed him or as she left him behind mired in paperwork.

She scrubbed a hand across her face as the _Normandy_ hurtled through the nebula towards the Anadius system. The Crucible was complete and they needed the Catalyst before the Reapers took note of it and destroyed it. This was their last shot. If their intel was wrong, if the Cerberus base wasn’t there, if they couldn’t extract the data from the stolen Prothean VI from the databases…she wasn’t sure what they would do. All she knew was that, since Thessia, it felt like she was slowly bleeding out again, like on Akuze, and she needed it to end soon. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could go on, no matter what facade she presented to the crew.

The door whisked open and Kaidan stood there, a bottle in one hand and two glasses in another. “Can’t sleep either?” She protested, she had to, because if she stopped, she wasn’t sure she would be able to start again, but he cut her off with a “Shhhh. Just take five minutes, a quick drink, and then I’ll go.”

Maybe she would never start again, but when he reached out a hand to stroke her cheek, as their lips met in a kiss, she realized she needed this, his touch, this contact, this ‘sanity break’ before she really did go crazy. She wished she’d thought to do it sooner, that he would’ve intervened earlier .

“I lied. I didn’t come here for a quick drink.”

She’d never been so happy to be lied to and pushed him back on the couch, letting him heal her soul.


	35. You made crazy sane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Schmoopy FemShep/Garrus vignette, as I dip a toe into this particular pairing finally

Shepard took time to simply appreciate the moment, the subtle, subsonic pulse of the engines through the walls, the hazy soap bubble colors through the skylight from the dark energy enveloping the ship and the faint pinpricks of stars beyond, the slightly scaly texture of Garrus’s skin where it touched hers along with the cool cotton sheets and the practical jersey knit tank top and shorts that made up her sleepwear. He shifted beside her, tremors through the bed and a frisson along her body, and a reflexive smile jerked up a corner of her mouth.

“You know,” he said, breaking into the dark silence of the cabin, “when you first suggested we, ah, ‘stress relief’, I thought you were crazy.”

The smile spread to the other corner, becoming a bemused grin. “Really? You seemed to take to the idea readily enough.”

“I was trying not to hurt your feelings. You humans are so fragile.”

Shepard snorted a laugh. “Fragile. Right.”

“I didn’t mean you. Necessarily,” he went on without remorse, then in aside, added, “I think some turian women might not have been able to pull of what you did tonight.” Mollified, she allowed him to continue without comment. “It was only after I thought about it for a while that I realized my interest was piqued. Because it was you.”

“Thank you? I think?”

His hand ran down her waist, something she knew he enjoyed more than even she did, and she leaned back to encourage him, enjoying the feel of his body and the rumble of his voice against her spine as he said, “I’m trying to thank _you_. Because even with all the crap going on in the galaxy right now, there’s no place I’d rather be and no one I’d rather be with than you.”

“The feeling’s mutual, Garrus,” she replied, reaching up to catch his hand in her fingers and lacing them together. “You’re a voice of sanity in this insane world.”

He chuckled. “I can’t _wait_ for you to tell my father that. He’s never going to believe me.”

The grin turned into a smirk. “I will, then.”


End file.
